EPTIn my last TvT game I decided that I didn’t need buildings at the ramp against Terran, but Tanis was playing random, so I played safe and built at the ramp anyway. At 2:40 I see an overlord floating into my view. I send my lone marine after him, and move my rax to block the ramp. I didn’t watch the fight, but if I had I would have known the overload just scooted off over the right cliff edge and could still see my SVCs. At 5:20 I scan his base and see a roach warren and two evolution chambers. From this I conclude he’s going to mass high tech roaches and I respond by adding more bunkered rines at the ramp. At 12:17 I decide I’m ready to start moving some units out of the base – I have two bunkers full of marines and a siege tank in defense. Shouldn’t those roaches have attacked by now?
In the replay I see an overseer, at 12:29 and still in my fog of war, drop a changeling right on the edge of my base. Never seen one if these before, and oh my, is it nasty. It assumes the form of one of my marines and tanis runs the changeling all around my base getting intel. At 14:20 three overlords fly over and drop roaches and hydralisks on my SVCs. I lose a lot of troops and SVCs but I fend him off. I scanned at 18:35. But I didn’t do a very good job of looking at what I saw. In the replay it is clear that the scan revealed THREE new hatcheries in the process of being created around the Lair. Tanis had expanded to his natural and some gold minerals (again without me knowing) and was amped up enough to roll over me! Around this same time, that overlord that got away in the beginning dropped another changeling on the other side of my base – again he tromped around undetected (how do you detect changelings I wonder?)
At 20:30 he flew in five overlords and dropped a couple of roaches and the rest hydralisks on my SVCs again. This time I didn’t have enough to stop them and it was game over.
What I learned: 1) If a ground push doesn’t come by the 12-15 minute mark, it probably never will. 2) If an enemy succeeds in doing something, (ie you don’t own them when they try it) they will come back and do it again – so plan for it next time. 3) I need to do some research on changelings – they’re nasty sneaky.
I read about people complaining that Zerg are boring, but the changeling dynamic is very interesting IMO.
